What is the cost of building a website in Canada?

Before starting on a website you'll want to understand how much it will cost to have a website built. You may have asked several web design firms for estimates or researched do-it-yourself website creation tools, and been confused by the vast price range offered.

We will exclude the DIY web tools for this comparison as the costs involved there aren't calculated in dollars but anger, cursing and grey hair. And most likely a visit to a pro after anyway.

So let's get to the nitty gritty right away, how much does it cost to create a website in Canada?

A small or medium sized business should initially plan to spend $3,000 - 7,000 on a website where the objective is to promote the business and collect leads.
A charity should initially plan to spend $7,500 - 15,000 where the objective is to promote its services, fundraising and donation opportunities. Some database/integration work is considered here.
A association should initially plan to spend $10,000 to 25,000 where the objective is to promote its services, its members' services, membership sign up/renewal, up to 3 tools and some database/integration work.

These cost estimates are based on one-time costs with most agencies and you can view a tabular breakdown below.

Website Maintenance Costs

Each type of organization should also expect follow up costs such as web hosting with a yearly cost of $240 (we're not including discount providers). We also factor in the domain registration cost here.

An SSL certificate with a yearly cost of $100.

Software updates which are managed for you at a rate of $150/hour.

We are excluding webmaster costs from our comparison as these can vary too greatly depending on the needs of the organization.

Website Building Cost Breakdown

For the following breakdown we are also providing a Members Village hosted + managed website solution as a cost comparison. We will also use a 3 year life cycle of the website to keep things simple.

Website Type	Initial Cost (average)	Management Tools	Cost of Hosting per year (average)	Cost of SSL per year	Maintenance cost per month (average)	Subscription per month	Total Maintenance/Subscription per month	Total cost after 3 years
Small/Medium Business	$5,000	Content Management	$240	$100	$150	$0	$179	$11,444 (about 2x more expensive)
Small/Medium Business on Members Village	$1,500	Content Management, Customer Management, Simple Payment Collection, YouTube Integration	$0	$0	$0	$125 (when paid yearly)	$125	$6,000
Charity	$11,250	Content Management, 3rd party donor management (additional costs)	$240	$100	$150	$100	$279	$21,294 (about 3.5x more expensive)
Charity on Members Village	$1,500	Content Management, Donor Management, Donations with CRA compliant receipts, Mass Email, Event Registration	$0	$0	$0	$125 (when paid yearly)	$125 (saving of 60%+)	$6,000
Association	$17,500	Content Management, News Management, Event Management, Directory, 3rd party integrations to Mailchimp, Shopify, etc	$240	$100	$300	$100	$429	$32,944 (about 2x more expensive)
Association on Members Village	$3,500	Content Management, Member Management, Configurable Database, Event Registration, Member Portal, Directory, Store, Member Signup/Renewals, Form Builder, Mass Email, Secure Groups, Online Courses, Financial Reports, Conference Management, Job Portal, YouTube Integration, Podcasts, Resource Guides	$0	$0	$0	$349 (when paid yearly)	$349 (saving of 20%+)	$16,064

Let's Build Your Website

You're going to love working with our web design team! With our passion for everything web we're more than happy to guide you from concept to a fully launched product with stellar support afterwards.

Our expertise helps you along from logos + brand identity to web design to post-launch activities such as SEO.

Don't fret - as our first chat is absolutely free and you don't have to commit if you don't like us. But you will!